


Home

by RadioCybertron



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: An entire Autobot Army full of bastards, An entire Decepticon Army full of desperate assholes, Functionalism, Hacking, M/M, Mind Control, Mind Fuck, NSFW, Post-War, Seriously NSFW, Sleep, Violence, War, dark themes, trickery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 22:02:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6537880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RadioCybertron/pseuds/RadioCybertron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The road home is a long one. It's full of twist, turns and surprises. And sometimes, the person you start out as- is not the person who arrives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The Voice was always in the back of his processor when he slipped into recharge, a lullaby and a horror all in one. It had been there for as long as he could remember. It was a part of his programming, part of his frame as much as anything else was these days. Orn didn’t go by when he didn’t hear it speaking to him, though the difference was he didn’t always have to listen to what it said.

Sometimes he did, though.

Sometimes it sang to him. Snippets of song and tunes from a Cybertron he can no longer remember, and never applied to him anyway. It would suffuse him in warmth, allow him to dip down into the melody like an oil bath. Joints would loosen and cables relax. It was almost like floating in a void.

Closest thing he’s had to a vacation since this entire thing started.

Sometimes it simply talked, different dialects to city-states he can’t remember. The tone never changed, soft and unyielding. It never asked questions, merely meandered to itself. Now and again, he could pick out words and even respond back. He swore he could almost feel joy at that, as if someone was actually happy that he had paid them attention in return.

Addictive feeling, that.

And that’s what had turned his attention more towards the Voice. Part of him knew he should be alarmed at something this deep in his cortex, the other part didn’t care anymore. There was nothing left to worry about. There were no secrets left, nothing that was not already known. In the depths of his memory banks an old song rose, as old as his functioning.  
  
_Together we wander_  
_steadfast and bold._  
_In lands that have no border._  
_in suns flaming and cold._  
_When Hadeen has set his last._  
_and into the stars we are flung._  
_Together will we wander._  
_Until all our songs are sung._  
  
He doesn’t know where it came from, or how old it actually is. His squad leader sang it before him, and he picked it up from there. It has been passed down from leader to leader, to finally rest with him. He is the last and there will be no more after. Mirage has left, and Bee is gone. The legacy ends with him. He shares it with the Voice, singing until the words are known. Until the Voice sings back, and together into the void they twine a duet.  
  
It is beautiful here, and he hopes he doesn’t ever have to go back. Back there, is pain and disappointment, rejection and loneliness. The Voice is all that he needs, and all that he wants.

And as he sinks deeper into that darkest warmth, he smiles.  
  
The Voice is singing to him again.

It is time to come home.  
  
——————-

The beeping has slowed, and that in itself is worrisome. Triage is no Ratchet. No miracle worker to pull mechs from the brink of death back into the land of the functioning. He is a competent enough medic, and should have been enough for what they needed.

No one had expected the ferocity in which Galvatron had reacted. They were all too used to Megatron’s methodical questioning, the torture, the interrogation. There was a method to his particular brand of madness. There was none here. Instead, there had been a hunt and a lucky shot that had shattered more than a wall and wiring.

It had nearly shattered a spark chamber as well.

He knew the odds had been low at sending a single mech in for a recon mission, but they had needed the information so badly. With Megatron’s subsequent initiation into the Autobot regime and the resurgence of Galvatron, the Decepticons had become major players once more. He had ordered the Earth contingent of Autobots to find out what they could.

And they had, at nearly the cost of their only spymaster’s functioning.

He supposes he should feel some sort of remorse for this, but all he can really summon up is a dull sense of surprise, of shock. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This has never happened. In four million years worth of warfare, they have never been this close to that edge. He finds himself not knowing what to do or what to say. Optimus would, he supposes- but like so many times before, he is not here.

Instead, with a careful hike of his door-wings- he stares back down at the (wrongly) silent figure on the med-berth and tries to reconcile it with the mech he knows. It doesn’t work.

It doesn’t compute.

And just as soon as he arrives, he has to leave- or risk a processor crash due to the ill-logic of it all. Which may be why he misses the black shadow that slinks out, feline and graceful- keeping watch, where he cannot.

It may be why they are so shocked, when on the next attack- the raid is not concentrated on their data-banks or the computers, but the medical wing instead. Supplies are gathered and the personnel is shattered. When they finally finish gathering up what is left, they realize they are missing someone.

A berth is empty, life-signs gone as they had never been in the first place.

—————————–

And somewhere, held tight in arms that cradle him close, he smiles.

He is coming home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the quiet is broken, and words are unspoken. But in the dark, we weave our spells.

It always amazes him just how pathetic their security system is. Marissa Fairborne had been almost perfect on her intel as to the location of the last Autobot hold out. He had double checked, of course. One does not leave such sensitive information in the hands of a mere organic. Flatline had been indispensable. Unlike Hook, he did not see the need to fill every waking moment with chatter or complaints. He did his job, and he did it well. It was all anyone could ask of him. 

If on the occasion, he made the odd request? 

Well, it was filled quietly and without complaint. Even Decepticons knew where their energon was spread.   
  
One would have thought that the medical wing would have been one of the most protected places within the stronghold, but it had not been. It had been almost stupidly easy to infiltrate with Ravage and bypass the system to get what they had wanted. The added supplies and occasional prisoner/personnel had merely been a bonus at this point.

He had what he wanted, what he had come for.

Being so high up in the Decepticon chain of command came with certain perks. One did not ask why you did what you did, only that you followed the proper set of orders when the time came. You were given a set of quarters appropriate to your rank, and what you did within that set space was your business. 

His business indeed. 

He had already entertained one Autobot here and had kept him company. However, Cosmos was not here and was not due back for at least half a vorn on a deep-space search. The small mech would not be forgotten again, he would not allow it. It was also unlikely that he would return so soon, and as thus it gave him space for his new companion.  Bits of wires from support systems trailed here and there as he hooked them into medical ports one by one. His helm tilted forwards as he each one flashed to life, a satisfied hum rumbling through his chassis.

Deft fingers brushed here and there, finding the signal modulator that flashed the red signal across the white chestplate. With the frame beneath him in such deep stasis, it’s a simple matter to hack… and change from red to purple. He slides them down until limp black servos touch his, curling his own within the soft cradle. 

Galvatron may have sent him to the void, but he will bring him back. 

One hand eases up to slide the red visor back, the battlemask retracting. He shifts until he can see the silvery faceplates beneath him, lax and yielding. It makes his spark clench, as this is not the mech he remembers.

But that is all right. 

He brings his other hand down, resting it on the fine curve just below the visor and begins to sing. He knows the song, plucked out of the mech’s own processor.

 It will be a signal, a guidepost, a light.

He will sing him home.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can't go home again, but you can linger awhile.

News spreads fast among old networks and older friends. He can what he has left of the latter on one servo. It’s much easier to connect to the networks. Bumblebee is gone and there’s no coming back. He had left after the very last skirmish and after they had finally split. Their time together had been brief, and he misses it- in his own way. Hound had understood him ways few had, but their differences had been too much.

Though, now and again, when time permits- he still receives the occasional visit and allows himself to hope that maybe reconciliation isn’t that far away. 

But the news of his former squad leader’s disappearance is a bitter bit of energon to swallow. Spec Ops is, was, had been a special breed. They were a group did things no other mechs could, or would. Jazz had left no mech behind, and those he could not rescue- he helped in other ways. Spectre, Daze, Punch-Counterpunch, Mystique, Bumblebee and himself were just a few of the agents he could recall right out of his processor. 

But there were so many more.

The other information that had come with the disappearance was just as hard. It hadn’t even been a battle, or a fight. It had been a raid, a kidnapping, a theft. They had taken several mechs, the unconscious former second lieutenant included. Unfortunately, Jazz had lost his rank right about the time of the human’s death that had so rattled him.

Another thing he found hard to forgive Prime for. 

A rattle of tumblers, and a faint slosh of high-grade to settle his neuro-receptors. He had never meant to abandon his mentor so completely. Maybe if he had been there, he could have at least seen who had the wherewithal to make such a bold move. 

Though in the deepest part of his spark, he already knows and Prowl has his work cut out for him if he wants him back. It takes another shot of the expensive energex before he has the courage he needs to send a message to the former 2IC to ask if he has heard anything new.

And if he’d like his help.

All that there is left now, is to wait.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, apologizing tastes like ashes and dust. And sometimes, nothing at all.

There is no coming “home” when you return back to active duty after so long out.

 A discharge is still a discharge, and when you leave the faces change and so do protocols. He does not recognize half the mechs here that mill from room to room, corridor to corridor. He’s aware that he’s been brought back more as a “consultant” than an actual agent, and could technically be considered a mercenary instead of a soldier.

That suits him just fine.

The hallways are still worn down by countless vorns of scraping pedes, walls pitted and scraped by guns and shoulder struts, by time and warfare. The mechs change, but the scenery never does. His polished and iridescent blue and white chromatic coat seems out of place here; but then again- didn’t it always?

The only place he ever seemed to be able to fit into was Spec Ops.

Left, right… three corridors down, four doors to the left, down the three floors and then to the right. 

Tactical Ops is on the left.

He would have thought that in the intervening years that even that would have changed, but he supposes that Prowl likes his routine and even the Decepticons aren’t stupid enough to try to ferret Prowl out of the center of his own web. He keys in the code he was given, and steps through the door as the seals hiss to let him through. The mech at the desk barely looks up as he enters, vaguely gesturing for him to take the seat across from his own. He does so, risking a surreptitious glance around the room. 

“The dents are new.”

There’s a faint tightening of fingers over the the stylus as it scrawls across the datapad he’s working on, but no other visible reaction. The mech’s voice is as cold as ice, and as sharp as the blade that he keeps in his subspace.

“I didn’t bring you in here to make commentary on the state of my decor, Mirage.”

The former spy watches the aggressive flare of the door wings. It’s a faint thing, but more than Prowl has shown in ages. The noble wonders if the stress of everything is finally starting to get to the tactician. Still, he can’t help but to draw the blade of his own tongue in defense. 

Niceties be _damned_. 

“No, you brought me in because you actually need my _help_ for once.”

He watches as the tactician wrestles with himself at that, a faint shudder of plating that makes the metal rattle and chime in places. There’s always a faint sense of victory when one is able to make the Praxian react physically, the same way the humans used to do their guards at the palace in England. Still, the sensation is fleeting and short lived as exhaustion finally wins, seeping into the mech’s field like a polluted cloud.

“Yes. Frag me, and everything about this situation- I _do_.” He all but grinds out the words, flinging himself back into his chair with a certain amount of violent force. His filters shift as he heaves in a deep sigh, glacial optics burning into the noble’s face-plates.

“Considering as how you are no longer officially part of the Autobot Militia or authorized Army, I can technically classify you as a mercenary. Which puts you in a different classification than where you were with Ops.”

The tactician leans forward after a moment, interlacing fingers over his datapad as he continues.

“As far as anyone knows, I’m just bringing you in here as a consulting force since you’re technically the last trained Ops member we have. Unofficially…”

One white hand gestures as he trails off, sliding up to rub at the side of his chevron.

“Unofficially, you want me to go in and work it like an actual Ops mission and see what is going on. You know, officially, my rates are not cheap for this sort of thing, Prowl.”

A grumbling sigh escapes the other as the former enforce scowls and leans back, regarding him tiredly as more of the exhaustion clouds his field until that’s all there is. 

“At this point, Mirage- I’ll pay them. Optimus is too busy doing Primus knows what. Galvatron is too much of a danger to ignore and…” He trails off, lips pressing into a thin, tight line as he turns his helm. 

“And your last, and only decent Ops agent might just be a POW,” he finishes for him, softer and a possible touch of gentleness. The mech looks like he hasn’t recharged in days. He and Prowl have had their differences, but that doesn’t mean he hates the mech. He eases up, taking the dossier that is slid to him from across the desk. That Prowl is asking him to do this in an unofficial capacity speaks volumes.

That Optimus knows nothing about it says even more. 

“Let me look over the information you have and run some scenarios, Prowl. I will comm you when I’m done.”

He glances over at the tactician, watching him nod once and then eases out into the hallway. He closes the door behind him, making sure the seals hiss shut and lock the commander safely back in. Protocol is protocol, even after getting out.

He glances briefly at the dossier as he makes his way towards the secured quarters that are to be granted to him during his “consultation stay” on base and exhales quietly. There’s only one mech he knows with this level of meticulous planning and  executable success.

_Soundwave._


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The more we patch and fix, the less stable are our lies.

Hacking should be considered an art form.

Delving into so many lines of code. Making tweaks here, and there to change the whole. It’s as layered as painting and as intricate as music. One wrong step, and the entire infrastructure comes tumbling down.

A badly woven web catches no turboflies. 

He is a consummate hacker. One of the best, if not the very best that Cybertron has to offer. There is no terminal he cannot use, no clamshell he cannot reflect from and no ‘net that can withstand him.

He knows the depths of Teletraan’s own archives, and the faults of Nemesis’s deep-sparked glitches. All their secrets are his, and his alone. He is a hoarder of data, a collector of caches. His fingers weave the delicate strands that other mechs only dance to once they’re pulled.

Except for one.

He cannot understand what he is doing wrong. 

Physically, the frame is healing. He can see new proto-mass every day forming, a grey creeping fungus that spreads across dead metal and reforms it. Armor greys and detaches, his hands carefully catching and cataloging the old scars and tears from battles long past. These will be reminders and trophies of a past no longer needed, and words lost in time.

Some are remembered almost lovingly.

Others with a special vengeance. 

Physically, he sees improvements and it boosts his mood. Energon seeps into the underfed tanks in thin drips, while nutrients are fed through other specialized lines. Flatline does not approve, but the necessary nutrients and items are given anyway from the Decepticon Medical Wing. He knows his requests will not make it to the audials of the ranks above them. Flatline his own special reason for his projects remaining silent and he is an old hand at understanding tit-for-tat.

Internally, things are degrading.

He sits after meetings and after the occasional run, fingers flying over his holographic keys. Lines of code run rampant across his HUD, patching holes like spiderwebs flung over rickety fencing. He patches, and he patches, and he patches. Each line brings a new hole, a new problem. Each line is patched, and another is brought up. 

He marathons this way for joors. Sometimes, he can shore up whole layers of this coding. The patches hold and the start ups and command-lines boot like they should. Sometimes, the errors fling their codex across his screens in sharp white glyphs, causing him to flinch in insult. He is fixated, focused in his purpose and fighting against time.

The code continues to decay.  
  
Line after line, it falters and falls- revealing more and more space and distance underneath. He is almost frantic with the need to fix, to repair. It stops being a project and becomes a _need_. He doesn’t understand why, only that as layer after layer sloughs away to show the corruption underneath, his spark tightens a little more. 

He recognizes the touch, he recognizes the coding- and it isn’t _his_. 

It is too quiet in his quarters, even with his symbiotes. They’ve stopped questioning him, stopped asking why the Autobot is there. Like his other projects, they’ve merely accepted the presence and reason and moved on to other pursuits, other distractions.

 It is a good thing, because in their absence they do not see the proud mech slump at his terminal, a hand pressed against his face plates in clenching desperation and frustrated exhaustion.

And meanwhile, his companion slumbers, lost in the darkness- singing.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The shadows smile and the light blinds, but neither illuminate much of anything.

Contrary to the best of plans, or maybe the worst of intentions- news has a funny way of getting to the people it least likely  needs to. Going back and forth between Cybertron and Earth is taxing enough for him, but the discreet datapad that is slipped onto his already burdened desk catches him by surprise. 

He’s stamped so many MIA reports,KIA lists, and signed so many “apology” forms that he doesn’t even know if half the recipients of those forms even exist anymore. Or, if like everything else in the tide of war; they were swept away and disappeared. After a while, one begins to feel numb, and the cold grief that had once stabbed at his spark at every designation and name has dulled into something resembling a silvery apathy.

It’s frightening in it’s lack of intensity. 

Finding this on his desk seems to be the final blow on top of everything else. Servotips reach up to brush along his helm, as he stares down at the humming holo-image below. He remembers this shot, remembers the mech hardly being able to sit still during it. Always had to be in motion, even if it was fidgeting, shifting, drumming, moving, dancing, or watching. 

Some part of the mech _never_ sat still. 

He smiles a little despite himself, but blows out a sigh as he reads down the rest of the report. The battle-mask retracts as he exhales, optics narrowing in quiet frustration. It seems like their intelligence network had become smaller, with larger holes with Mirage’s departure. The attack on the base should not have happened, or been easily ferreted out with enough footwork and intel gathering. 

Primus Almighty, he’d seen the Spec Ops division put together an entire Decepticon Plot in under three orns with just a _notion_ on what to go on!

His shoulder-struts slump after a moment, the rotors groaning in their cuffs. But, that’s the crux- isn’t it? The division unofficially no longer exists. Bumblebee was deactivated, Mirage was given an honorable discharge and Jazz hadn’t had time to train another to his level of expertise. An over-worked, under-fueled and over-stressed mech could easily make mistakes, right?

Right.

But that didn’t explain why he’d gone missing. According to Triage’s report, life-signs had been bare minimal. Right on the knife’s edge of permanent stasis. That didn’t explain what interest the remnants of the Decepticon Empire had left in him. 

A former, demoted officer in medical. 

It made no sense. 

He frowns as he skims further past the photos of the damage until he comes to where another batch of notes are gathered, showing the involvement of his former second in command. His optics narrow again as he puts the datapad back down. Mirage is involved again, but this time as an outside consultant. The sender of the information did not leave their designation, and even if they left traces- he has no idea how to hack on the level necessary to find that.

But he has suspicions. 

The fact this is going on behind his backstruts is bad enough, but… the fact he _let_ it happen is probably the worst. Guilt, clawing up his backstruts and oozing into his spark chamber, is a welcome emotion. It chases out the apathy and the silvery stillness, even if only for a few breems. The wavering holo-image beneath him does not judge or change, but he can see the age in the buzzing data and the small mark of the image capture’s logo.

He pauses at that, shifting a little as he brings up the holo-image again, this time magnifying the mark until he can get a clear image of the logo. It’s nothing fancy, a simple set of designation glyphs- but it’s something behind them that gets his attention.There was a very good reason why Orion Pax was both an archivist and police officer in short functioning, and while he may not retain memories in complete batches, he recognizes what he’s looking at. 

A Functionalist badge.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We find the truth behind old facades, old bandages over older wounds.

The patches are not holding.

 Every day has become the same fight. Shoring up holes in the coding, only to watch them falter when he returns. It feels like trying to build a fortress out of sand. Dealing with Galvatron leaves him exhausted on more than one level, and the frustration from this is not helping either.

 For a single, irritating moment he wonders why he’s even bothering to _try_.

 But, he knows why.

 The sing-song voice that reverberates in his helm during his recharge, that flows down to his spark and rebounds off of its lonely orbit. He tells himself it’s not obsession, it’s simply a reorienting of resources. Of gathering what was lost, of reusing what was thrown away.

 He tells himself a lot of things, and sometimes he actually believes it.

 The supine form in his berth merely slumbers on, in the recharge of the innocent and the unknowing. Piece by piece, the black-and-white has slowly disappeared into a more pleasing and uniform silver. Bit by bit, he removes the former touches of the past owners to rebrand his own aesthetic.

 A far more appropriate one, if he is allowed to say so to himself.

 “This is going past your usual investment of time, Soundwave.”  Ravage’s drawl is soft, somewhat static-ridden from distance and space. He’s been checking up as often as he can, despite being positioned on the Lost Light. “You usually have an objective finished by now.”

 “Acknowledged, but objective not yet finished,” is the monotone reply, fingers dancing across the keyboard as yet another marathon session of recoding begins- the older codexes and matrixes falling apart like cobwebs in a high wind.

 Ravage doesn’t reply to that, instead concentrating on sending over the parsed information from his reports. They are compiled, recorded and a few more comments exchanged before the comm is cut due to an ion storm. But the words remain with him, and quadruped has never been one that has pulled punches before.

 A cascade of errors gathers his attention before he can ruminate further, causing him to descend into a calm flurry of action. His latest patch had been to the central processing cortex of the mech’s personality components- a tricky situation at best. Now, the coding is beginning to completely decay and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. At best, he can try to shore up what is left and hope that he’ll have a mech at the end of this and not a drone again.

  Or…

 He can go back to Cybertron.

 It’ll mean defying orders, completely abandoning the commune into the hands of a psychotic warlord who will stop at nothing to get what he wants (and isn’t that familiar?) It will mean going deep into (still) enemy territory, defying Starscream and breaking into the most heavily guarded of the Central Archives and into the Ark section.

 But if he’s right, and he usually is- then somewhere, there is a download of the original personality matrix for the former ops mech. Functionalist Society did more than just treat their population as a perfect machine to keep the flow of economy and society going.

 They also made copies of certain mechs, certain people of interest or use.

Shockwave, Orion Pax, Megatron, Ratchet- just to name a few.

 It explains why the coding has been falling apart so quickly, so easily. It’s harder to code a normal mech, harder to keep memories from shining through and harder to make sure that his personality matrix keeps as it should. Recoding and reworking a processor can only do so much.

 On a normal Cybertronian.

 But drones break so easily.

 And what he has in his berth is _not_ Autobot Jazz, but it’s a damned good facsimile and it had him convinced right until the last section of code fell away. The thing is, while it is NOT him. It _could_ be him, and it _thinks_ it’s him and there’s no telling if the actual mech even exists anymore outside of a personality matrix at all.

 The idea that a mere drone with inferior coding has managed to outwit and out-maneuver him all of these vorns is a rather stinging one.  But if he succeeds, then not only would he have access to one of the last hidden refuges of Functionalist intel- he would also have a mass of leverage against not only Starscream and Galvatron, but Optimus Prime as well.

 …and that’s a scheme worth considering.

He reaches over, finding the slim fingers and runs a hand over the lax digits. He is not a mech prone to emotional decisions, but this mech has given him the key to possibly ending what’s left of the skirmish between the two opposing factions as well as gaining an immeasurable powerbase in which to use in his favor. A faint smirk curls upwards behind the mask as he tightens those fingers. The Autobots never could learn to get rid of all their evidence, and now it’s going to come back and haunt them in the most literal way possible.

 “Soundwave, superior… Autobots, Galvatron, Starscream- _inferior_.”

He allows himself a small moment to allow the feeling to rush through his frame before he turns back to coding, shoring up again what he can- and this time rewriting personality matrixes into what he wants to see- as opposed to what had been there to begin with.

 Jazz’ll be dead weight coming with him to Cybertron, but he’ll leave an asset- and if he can pull this off, a partner.

 The Decepticons will retake Cybertron, one way- or another.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't ever under-estimate your enemy, or give him the resources to defeat you. Sometimes, the trash you throw away is the weapon he needs.


End file.
